Where the city lies. Milan within the traces of the ancient Via Porticata

The essay aims to investigate the morphological value of Milan’s ancient Via Porticata, the extension of the decumanus maximus along the road to Rome. Conceived as an architectural infrastructure, the extramural axis extended the city beyond its fortifications, embodying the idea of an urban continuum that surpassed the physical limits of the urbs. Today, this monument endures on two complementary levels: materially, through the archaeological remains preserved beneath the modern city and intersected by contemporary infrastructures; and morphologically, through the persistence of its spatial void and its capacity to orient the surrounding urban fabric. This space, both architecture and street, constituted a constructed threshold in which form established the rhythm of a spatial sequence. Despite the urban profound transformations, the Via Porticata continues to structure the city, functioning as an architectural and constructive device that imparts coherence to its form. Along its path, significant monuments reaffirm its orientation: the Ca’ Granda, the Basilica of San Nazaro in Brolo, the Torre Velasca, and the remains of San Giovanni in Conca, ancient entrance to the roman city and origin of the decumanus. In the reading of Milan’s urban form, these sites emerge as sensitive nodes that reveal the enduring memory of the ancient fabric. In this perspective, the ancient trace is interpreted as an active design instrument, an operative structure to reflect on the city’s deeper identity and on how architecture can reveal and renew the latent forms within the urban fabric. Selected graduation projects illustrating this theme are presented within the research on urban museum itineraries of Milano Archeologica at the Politecnico di Milano.